The operators of the now-defunct MLM firm PlusToken allegedly spied on gullible investors, promising them handsome payouts if they invested in the token and, in turn, urged others to invest for a small “commission.”
A month after the arrest of masterminds of the notorious PlusToken crypto scam, Chinese authorities have prosecuted the six of the chief masterminds among the arrested suspects. As revealed in a court filing released on Monday, The People’s Procuratorate of Xiangshui County, Yancheng City, prosecuted the defendants Chen Shaofeng, Liu Jianghua, Lu Qinghai, Jin Xinghai, Wang Yin, and Zhang Qin according to law. The six suspects were named on allegations of leading the PlusToken crypto scam leading to the and about 103 others carting about $6 billion.
As reported, the operators of the now-defunct multi-level marketing (MLM) firm PlusToken allegedly spied on gullible investors, promising them handsome payouts if they invested in the token and, in turn, urged others to invest for a small “commission.” The alleged PlusToken scam ran for over a year and scammed as many as 3 million users.
Crypto Scams Comes in Different Shades
The prevalence of scams in the crypto sphere cannot be overemphasized. While genuine blockchain and crypto-based firms proliferate across different countries and regions, the phony fraudulent projects are usually lurking around.
The PlusToken crypto scam is one of the most notorious scams in recent times in terms of nature with which the team perpetuated the fraud and the length of time it spanned. Crypto scams take different forms from introducing an unsustainable project into the crypto space to the impersonation of key figures in the space. All these are usually done to defraud gullible and unsuspecting users.
A major development in the crypto space is the act by key figures calling out projects as scams. Notable in this regard is Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin who alleged that Craig Wright’s Bitcoin SV is a complete scam. The now applauded TRON blockchain and digital currency has also been called out to be a scam, this time by DigiByte founder, Jared Tate.
Despite the harsh criticisms being faced by these projects at their budding stages, they have managed to weather the storms. This is a trait scam projects do not exhibit, and at the slightest hiccup, the true motives behind the project which is fraud get exposed. This was seen in the case of the PlusToken Scam.
PlusToken Crypto Scam in Retrospect
PlusToken ran its alleged scheme under the cover of being an innocent crypto wallet and interest-bearing application from South Korea. It promised over 10%-30% in monthly gains on initial capital to users based on a generous referral program.
As reported, the case is the first network pyramid scheme that used Bitcoin and other digital currencies as a trading medium to be detected by the public security agency. It involved more than 2 million participants, with more than 3,000 hierarchical relationships, and the total value of the digital currency involved exceeded 40 billion yuan.
Coinspeaker also wrote about a close correlation in the tanked price of bitcoin (BTC) in early February owing to the cashing out of funds by the PlusToken crypto scam team.
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